Well, that was surprising. President-elect Donald Trump is something still surreal to me. As I type this I’m tired and in shock. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton and is giving his victory speech; I can’t help but feel like this isn’t really happening. It wasn’t supposed to. I read all the papers, looked at all the polls, heard all the pundits and this moment was impossible. It was settled science, we were told by people whose job it is to tell us these things.
Yet it is real. It did happen. And I am surprisingly happy.
Not so much at the prospect of a Trump presidency, that remains a mystery and, like with George W. Bush – who conservatives failed to hold in check on issues like spending because he had an “R” after his name – but because the country rejected the Clinton/Obama philosophy of governance. The last 8 years just got the collective finger from voters. And it’s a beautiful thing.
The big winner of the night is obviously Trump. This goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, if only to make it more real.
For Donald, the fun is over (as much as anyone can call running for president fun) and the work begins. The rubber is hitting the road, and as long as he sticks to the list of judges he released for the Supreme Court, we should be OK.
As I’ve written, some of his ideas are pretty good, now it’s up to Congress to make them reality.
Another winner was Congress. While the media spent its time discussing whether or not Trump would be a down-ballot anchor, they should’ve asked if he’d have coattails.
The House was never really in doubt, but holding the Senate was huge. That screeching sound you’re hearing is liberals slamming the breaks on the concept of changing filibuster rules on judges. Expect to read “think pieces” from pundits who’ve spent an inordinate amount of time decrying the filibuster to pretend they didn’t write or say those words. If nothing else, it will be fun to watch.
The big losers, off the top of my head, are a little more fun to write about.
Hillary Clinton, obviously. And Barack Obama. And Joe Biden. And Michelle Obama. And Bruce Springsteen. And Jon Bon Jovi. And Lena Dunham. And Barbra Streisand. And every other annoying left-winger you can think of or are Facebook friends with.
They deserve more words than I have the energy to give them at 3:30 in the morning, so I’ll revisit this in a later column. I got a bigger fish to fry right now.
The biggest losers, and it’s fun to write this too, hold positions of influence, or at least they did. Actually, at least they thought they did. Anchors, pundits and pollsters didn’t just end up with egg on their faces, their heads were crushed under a chicken coop.
Whatever credibility the media had left was smothered Tuesday night. After decades of slipping further and further into activism, the American people said “enough.” Even liberals acknowledged bias, seemingly for the first time. In the self-affirming media world we live in now, where you can isolate yourself with information conforming to what you want it to be, even those who nodded in agreement with ABC, NBC, and CBS nightly newscasts recognized they were the choir being preached to.
The only thing pollsters got right about the election was the date.
For people whose job it is to take the temperature of the nation they sure missed a raging fever. We all did. People who swore Trump would do what he did were “best guessing,” if I’m being generous, or just wishful thinking.
Pollsters are supposed to be the pulse takers. This year they put their fingers on the scale. And those fingers got crushed.
And the pundits, oh the pundits. I wore out the batteries on my remote flipping from network to network to watch the faces of smug know-nothings melt as the realization that not only were they wrong, but Americans collectively were telling these people who dine out on their perceived influence at swanky DC restaurants were going to go hungry.
Remember in 2012 when these people warned us the Republican Party had become a regional party that’d never win another national election? I do.
This implosion couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of people.
I have to go to bed, I have to work in the morning. More importantly, I have to get some sleep so I can wake up and it this was all real. Amazing.